Designer Martha Hudson was touring the country, sewing custom-made swimsuits in her converted school bus, when she stopped in San Marcos. Originally from Sacramento, she visited a childhood friend who had relocated to the town—with its spring-fed, year-round 72-degree river—and Hudson parked her bus in her friend’s driveway for long-term stays. “I had a long list of things I wanted in a home, but daily access to fresh water for swimming was one of them,” she told me over coffee in South Austin. “Living on the road, there were a ton of places I loved, but San Marcos hit so many marks. That river is what really sold me on moving to Texas.”
The goal of Luv Martha, Hudson’s one-woman “bikini-slinging business,” founded in Sacramento in 2014: to fill a gap Hudson saw in the mainstream fashion industry. “It was just harder to find anything that fit a bigger body and was functional and swimmable,” Hudson said. “A lot of what’s out there for plus-size bodies is full coverage, all black, not that playful or fun. It’s getting better nowadays, but when I started this ten years ago, there weren’t really that many options out there. So I started making them for me.” Now, hundreds of custom suits later, Hudson swims in the San Marcos River daily after work—and she makes her own pattern for each custom swimsuit she sells.
Hudson’s clientele includes female, male, and gender-nonconforming customers. She also makes custom swimwear for people whose recent surgeries or medical conditions, like a mastectomy or the need for an insulin pump, require customization. “Sometimes I do pockets for insulin pumps, those kinds of things,” Hudson said. “That’s where my heart is in this business.” Hudson’s customers seek out not just a well-fitting suit, but also the variety of fabrics available on the Luv Martha site. Hudson sources fabrics from mill-end stores (shops that sell deadstock fabrics to avoid waste) and independent artists, whom she’ll collaborate with to design her own patterns. There’s a wide variety of swimsuit styles too—from bikinis sold as separates to one-piece suits with varying levels of midriff and bottom coverage. The suits are reversible, and buyers often mix and match three fabrics. If you’re line dancing into your coastal cowgirl era and choosing fabrics for a reversible suit, you might go with the black bandanna print on one side and a classic solid black on the other. Or you might pair a cheetah print with a brick-red solid, a lemon print on a black and white gingham background, smiley faces, or camouflage.
Hudson learned to sew at the age of five, in Sacramento. “My sister was taking piano lessons and my brother was taking karate, and my mom asked what kind of classes I wanted to take. Apparently, I told her I wanted to take sewing, which was not one of the options,” Hudson said. “So she asked the ladies at the fabric store in our neighborhood if I could come there after school to learn to sew, and they said yes. It was a rotating group of eight older women. I would wander around the fabric store and pick out what I wanted to make and then they would help me make it. They taught me everything.”
I ordered two swimsuits from the Luv Martha site to kick off my own hot girl summer. The first was a one-piece called the Ilene Romper, which appeared at a glance to have a full-coverage bottom half. But when I went to add it to my cart, there were options, including a “Booty Coverage” drop-down menu that ranged from “Full coverage” to “Thong,” with the in-between options “Just-a-peek-o-cheek,” “Half the cheeks out plz,” and “Cheeky cheeky.” I then watched the measuring tutorials on the Luv Martha Instagram account and grabbed a measuring tape from a dresser drawer. When I saw that Martha needed my torso measurement, not just the usual bust, waist, and hip measurements, I knew this would be a well-fitting suit. A free alternation is also included—“because measurements can only tell me so much,” Hudson said. “They only tell me the circumference of somebody, not, you know, the shape.”
Though I don’t wear plus sizes, the internet would deem me a midsized woman. In recent years, there have been more TikToks and Instagram reels dedicated to dressing for those of us who fall between sizes ten and fourteen. Though I agree with Hudson that much has changed in the past decade, it seems thinness is still the valued prize, though I’ve learned from friends of all sizes that hang-ups about wearing swimwear in public are rampant. While swimming should be a joyful, universal summer activity, terms like plus-size, FUPA, mom bod, and midsize (all of which have made their way into my own vocabulary) only point out that there are some bodies that might be better off tucked tightly behind a tummy panel. “The swimsuit industry in general has failed us,” Hudson says. “And the underlying message was always, if the swimsuits didn’t work for us, there was something wrong with us, not with the swimsuits—and I think that’s terrible and not true.”
Hudson also stocks ready-to-ship swimsuits on her website, for customers sized XS–XXL. Though my size is in the ready-to-ship range, I’m looking forward to a summer of swimming in suits made just for me. I haven’t had a custom-made anything since my grandmother sewed Halloween costumes and dresses for me as a child, and something about a garment made for oneself—especially a swimsuit—sounds healing for anyone who grew up loving a good swim and awash in a culture of genetically blessed, airbrushed swimsuit models with nearly unattainable figures. “The most surprising part of being in this business has been being invited into people’s most vulnerable worlds. Swimming is the only time [many of us] are dressed in so little in public,” Hudson said. “And I think to be physically uncomfortable at the same time is a terrible experience. It’s why so many people dread swimsuit shopping.” Ordering two very different Luv Martha suits, knowing Hudson would be making a pattern for each one based on my measurements, was indeed unlike any swimwear-shopping experience I’ve had. As I await the arrival of the suits from Hudson, I’ve got my swim spots along the Texas coast picked out.